Two Moons: A Conversation with Hodge

Hodge is a master of tension. His tracks and sets weave a dancer’s perspective with a vivid sense of imagination, somehow giving you the room to dream while your body is driven into relentless motion. He draws inspiration from many sources, ranging from memorable personal experiences to the elaborate settings of science fiction novels. 

For his debut live set, Hodge is crafting the soundtrack of a world where cutting-edge technology coexists with the beauty of nature. He aims to give the crowd a glimpse inside his mind, expressing his feelings of wonder through the texture of music.

Jacob and I caught up two weeks before his performance at MUTEK to chat about his vision for the set, the power of memories, and the process of telling stories through music. 

Hey Jacob, how’s it going? First off, I was wondering what your setup is going to be for the MUTEK performance. Is it going to be a pure DJ set or are you also including live MIDI or hardware elements?

It’s actually gonna be pure live, no DJ, this will be my first ever time performing like that. To be honest with you, every time I practice it, something’s changing. The way I have it set up at the moment, I’ve got Ableton running in clip view and I’ve kind of sequenced out, I would say, too long of a time period. There’s some exact moments where I know what I want to happen, but with the scene launchers, you can jump back and forth depending on how the crowd is responding. 

I really want a versatile setup that gives me the ability to react to the crowd and the space. Being a DJ for a long time, I love being able to react. And the idea of performing and being set in a linear thing freaks me out a bit. When I’m DJing, if there’s a tune that’s not going down well I can run that as a tool in the background, and bring something else in. So to get that freedom in the live set, I chose clip view and I’ve also got a Novation controller, which basically lets you control the faders in terms of the volumes and what I can dub out. I also wanted the ability to dub the live set as I perform. I recently saw Mad Professor live, and I was telling myself “Oh my god, this is unbelievable.” With the ability to dub things out live, you can create this really trippy kind of environment. 

For me, the Two Moons set is going to be about a world building version of my own tunes. It’s the first time I’m going to have the ability to create an extended period to just be like, “Okay, we can live inside this world I’ve built in my mind.”

It’s versatility in terms of sequencing but also with the dubbing, so lots of effects are going to be applied live. I’ve got one of the new Ableton Pushes as well, that’s going to allow me to do some live drums and synthesis over the arrangement. I’ve got a whole bunch of guitar pedals I’m playing with too. It’s one of those things that it feels like it can be never ending.

One time I saw Overmono play live, and I was looking at their setup and asking myself, “Do they really need fifteen synths on stage?” And then when you start doing live yourself, you’re like, “Oh, that’s fun. That’s why they’re doing that.” I’ve got another two weeks until the performance, which means I’ll probably practice it another twenty times. We’ll see where it ends up, all I know is it’ll be something different every time. I can’t imagine it ever becoming stale, for me that’s probably the most exciting part about doing a live set.

In terms of the conceptual feel, what can people expect when they see you perform? I was reading a bit about your Two Moons concept on the MUTEK website. 

It’s going to be really dancefloor oriented. So Two Moons, that’s my label where I put out two tunes called Sub 100. And the idea of that was basically I was gonna release Sub 100 and then just release loads of records going forward on the label. I released that one record, got completely stuck in my own head and was like, “I’m not sure exactly what to release next, I’ll wait.” Then all of sudden it was two years later and I hadn’t done another record on it.

But fortunately, I’ve just gone through a really positive writing period. And when I’m writing music, I try to not let my brain sit in reality, it kind of goes off into its own world. I’ve always read a lot of sci-fi and stuff like that. So a lot of the time I’ll be kind of going back to books I’m reading in my mind. Over time, I’ve somehow built up this very specific world in my brain that my music lives in. And I want to try and translate that to the dancefloor.

If I could put it into words I would, but I guess the whole point of the music is that it’s something I can’t put into words. I’ve got a visual map in my mind of what the set’s going to be like, but at the end of the day it’s a sonic experience. So it’s best experienced with your ears: it’s body music, it’s dancefloor. And it’s kind of just a live version of what I’ve been about. 

I tried to make the set really esoteric at first, kind of trippy and more of a choreographed live act. But I’m working off my own responses to the music, and I kept thinking, “Everything I produce is about moving and dancing and body movements.” So it ended up being really dancefloor again. I never, ever intended that at the start. I was telling myself “Oh, the live experience is gonna be something I can really work out progressions in, maybe I can even let it sit without beats for a while.” But every single time I was like, “Let’s just add some energy”, and then all of sudden I’m back to dancing. It’s what I do and what I love.

I’ve also got a bunch of new music in there. For this performance, like half of it, maybe more is going to be based around unreleased tracks. I’ve got some tracks with Coffintexts in the works and I’ve been producing with Ma Sha too, I’ll probably incorporate some of those tracks. And then I’ve got two or three new tracks from the next Two Moons release, which will probably drop sometime in October.

To be honest with you, I know how the set feels in the studio, but when I get to the venue, it’s going to feel totally different. And I don’t know exactly what it’s going to be like until I perform it at least once.

That makes sense, there are so many variables that you can’t control. You’re not familiar with the venue, you don’t know exactly who’s gonna be in there or how they will react.

Yeah, for sure. My brain is also very different to other people in terms of what I like. Sometimes I’ll be at home and I’m like “Wow, that’s really deep” or “Oh that track slams” and then when I’m DJing, I get to the club and play the track and I’m like “Oh my god that’s not deep!” All of a sudden the kick’s banging and everyone is losing their minds. And then I’ll play what I consider to be an absolute booting tune and it ends up being quite a deep heady moment on the dance floor. 

To come back to what you were talking about with visualization, how would you describe the world that you’re creating within your music?

When I was writing my album Shadows in Blue a few years ago, I was collecting pictures in a folder on my computer that I associated with the sound of my music. I’ve always been obsessed with plants and green and the earth. So it’s that combined with an interest in sterile artificial gardening environments where you’d grow loads of crops and things like that, which has a weird sci-fi feeling to it. It’s a very cold, dentistry-esque space I’m imagining, but with all this luscious beauty inside of it. And what interests me the most is the contrast of it all. The coexistence of the earth and the plants with something quite technological and futuristic is where I really get excited.